


The Fourth Wall

by nightjarctictern



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25509211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightjarctictern/pseuds/nightjarctictern
Summary: The power from a higher dimension had destined Harry Kim’s fate.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	The Fourth Wall

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [第四面牆](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25425445) by [nightjarctictern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightjarctictern/pseuds/nightjarctictern). 



> Translation of my own work.  
> See the original work in Chinese here↓  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/25425445

He didn’t know the man in the mirror.

  
However, the eyes looking into his eyes were exactly the same as the ones as usual. Those brown irises were just identical to his. What differed the two pairs of eyes were the crow’ feet and the under-eye bags.He pat the badge to sent out an intruder alert, but the communication system seemed to be off-lined.

  
“Who are you?” asked him.

  
“I am Harry Kim.” said the man in the mirror, “Harry, I am you from 25 years later.”

  
To a certain degree, Harry was used to this kind of shit. This was what a space travel like after all. Moreover, that somewhat wrinkled face did look similar to his. “What brings you here?” asked Harry.

  
“I need you to do something from now on, Harry. This is the matter of life and death.” said the man in the mirror, “I come to save your life, you’ve got to believe me.”

  
“From now on, you are going to do 100 squats for each day.”

  
“What?” Being ready to risk his life, Harry stunned. Although it was unexpected, this was not an easy mission at all.

  
“This is critical for you to survive. Trust me.”

  
“You’ve come all the way here, just to lecture me about staying fit?” said Harry, suspiciously. “Wait a minute, I got it. Perhaps I am going to die of some cardiovascular disease, and I have to work out to avoid it?”

  
“No. I cannot explain to you at the moment, but you have to keep your butt muscular and curvy. Otherwise, you will die in the near future, and I will no longer exist.”

  
Fuck. Harry found it annoying. It must be a practical joke of Tom Paris. Every time when Tom got off duty, while passing by his station, he always made a loud slap on Harry’s buttocks, sometimes with a whistle or a “Nice buns, babe.” or “Look at dat ass.” These happened right on the bridge, and neither the Captain nor the First Officer had ever said anything about the sexual harassment happening in the workplace.

  
“Tom, where have you been hiding?” Harry looked around his quarters. “You got me. Now you can show up. ”

  
“This has nothing to do with Tom.” said the mirror man, seriously. “This is important. You are sailing into the Borg space, right?”

  
“Do not joke me on the Borg, Tom.”

  
“It’s no kidding!” the mirror man’s voice began to rise. “You are going to be killed in an away mission to a Borg cube if your butt isn’t curvy enough.”

  
“I start to feel not that funny, dude.”

  
“THIS IS NOT FUNNY. Harry, you don’t get it. Your life is in danger. Please save your own life and save mine-- ”

  
Harry left the mirror.

  
“Don’t go! Your butt is getting flatter and flatter. The universe where I exist will collapse along with your butt!”

  
“I am going to report to the Captain if you keep doing that.”

  
Harry turned his head, finding that the man in the mirror was fading away.

  
“See? This is the consequence for you not to train your butt. I am vanishing!”

  
The mirror man’s voice was getting further and further, turned into a humming like a mosquito and eventually disappeared.

  
Harry Kim didn’t keep this in mind. He ate, slept, went on duty and missions as usual. He even forgot to ask about this when he ran into Tom Paris. Therefore, Tom Paris had no chance to explain that he knew nothing about this little incident. Were it not for the accident in that mission, Harry Kim might always think that it was a prank from his best buddy.

  
Nevertheless, he didn’t associate the two events either at that time.

  
When the accident happened, Harry saw his chest ripped off and blood splashed. At the same time he felt the burning pain from the cut. Unlike regular wounds, it seemed that species 8472’s claws were thousands of degrees in temperature, or that there were thousands of fire ants stinging beneath the wound. He screamed in agony, twisted his face, struggled and was finally beamed to Voyager’s sickbay. The white light in the sickbay made him laid back a little, and the struggling had certainly exhausted him, so he gave up and let the Doctor do whatever had to be done to him.  
Yet his suffering hadn’t come to the end. Not long after, yellowish, slimy tendrils grew out of his wound, spearing through his skin, climbing up onto his neck, laryngeal prominence, lower jaw and chin.

  
“The cells of species 8472 is consuming him inside out.” the Doctor explained to the Captain, “In the other words, Ensign Kim is eaten alive.”

  
Being consumed and eaten by the yellow tendrils, knowing the Doctor could do nothing about it, Harry Kim looked at the Captain helplessly. Although Captain Janeway could provide comforts similar to maternal love, she wasn’t able to ease his pain and despair, either. Behind the Captain, the vague figure showed up again.

  
“Do you come to take me away?”

  
The aged Harry facepalmed with his figure becoming more and more clear. It seemed that no one was able to see him except for Harry.

  
It must be the Reaper.

  
“I have already told you, Harry. This is the consequence that you didn’t train your butt.”

  
“I’m about to die.” said Harry, weakly. “Don’t talk trash to me.”

  
“It is time for you to know, Harry. Look over there.”

  
Looking beyond the Captain and the Doctor, Harry saw another dimension. He wondered why he had never looked at the sickbay from this angle, as if an extra space had just grew out from nothing. Could human beings ever observe this dimension? Or was it just the illusion created by his dying cerebrum?

  
Beyond the Captain and the Doctor, there were many people walking around and many large mechanics.

  
“Is this the afterlife?”

  
“No, this is the fourth wall.”

  
A black, weapon-like mechanic moved.

  
“That’s the camera, Harry. You are in a film studio.”

  
Harry felt a huge amount of information flooded into his collapsing mind.

  
“You may find it hard to believe, but you from another universe, which is me, have been included in the list of the sexiest people and therefore kept the role alive. You have to know that the audience is horny. If you don’t maintain the sexiness of your ass, they will abandon you soon.”

  
That makes sense, so it works this way...everything would sound likely when you were almost unconscious. Harry shed a tear of regret.

Bonus:

  
Harry: As long as you are from the future, can you tell me when I will be promoted?

  
Future Harry: :)))))

**Author's Note:**

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Kim_(Star_Trek)  
> The producers at one point had planned to permanently kill off Harry Kim during season three, but after Wang was included in the People list of sexiest people alive 1997, the plan was abandoned.  
> https://images.plurk.com/1un2QTfJOaDUVMoDp1CwWT.png


End file.
